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During my first stab at higher education, I was a prop. I wasn’t at Buffalo University (UB) to enrich my own well-being, I was there to enrich the well-being of others—namely, administrators, tenured professors, and coaches.
Sadly, I wasn’t the only prop at UB. Most of my fellow students were props as well. We partied, pursued fluff majors, and graduated without any worthwhile skills, insights, or attitudes. But our tomfoolery was welcomed because we didn’t show up to campus with just an Animal House mindset. We showed up with parental largesse, state subsidies, and federally-backed student loans. And mommy and daddy’s money coupled with subsidies and student loans provided the essential backstop to a lot of phony-baloney jobs and some very generous salaries. Without a lot of props, then, the gravy train UB administrators, tenured professors, and coaches were riding on would have come to an abrupt, soul-crushing halt.
How to Avoid Being a Prop in College
If you want to give a 4-year college a try and go for the vaunted bachelor’s degree, you don’t want to do so as a prop. You want the “college experience” to be as beneficial for you as it will be for your school’s administrators, tenured professors, and coaches. Here’s how to avoid being a prop.
Are You Really College Material?
Can you handle calculus? Can you handle organic chemistry? Can you handle sentences with really big words and lots of twists and turns? If you can’t, you will be a prop at a 4-year college.
Here’s a good rule of thumb. If you weren’t in the 85th percentile or higher on the SAT or ACT, a 4-year college is not for you. Generally speaking, only those with cognitive abilities higher than one standard deviation above the norm can handle true college-level work (i.e., tough majors like engineering, programming, and accounting).
You, of course, will have no problem getting into a 4-year college if your standardized test scores are below the 85th percentile. There are only a hundred or so truly selective 4-year colleges out there. Most 4-year colleges will accept anyone who has an SAT or ACT score within one standard deviation of the norm (i.e., a score between 865 and 1255 on the SAT, and a score between 16 and 26 on the ACT). And that’s part of the scam. Remember, college administrators, tenured professors, and coaches need props to keep the gravy train rolling. So here’s a dirty little secret that few in the college-industrial complex will dare tell you: If you scored below the 85th percentile in either the SAT or ACT, the odds of you earning a tough and financially rewarding STEM degree are low. If you do manage to earn a bachelor’s at all, it will likely be in a fluff major such as communications, sociology, or peace studies. Your four or five years of higher education will thus amount to nothing. You’ll have an economically worthless degree, a crapload of student loan debt, and a rather large opportunity cost from not joining the labor force four or five years sooner.
Quick aside. I recently came across the below YouTube video. The vlogger is a freshman at Princeton and in this video, he examines the downside of an Ivy League education. His views on this matter are certainly interesting enough, but what really caught my attention was the difficulty of his course work. In his computer programming course, a recent homework assignment took him 15 hours to complete. Fifteen hours! And this fellow is surely no dummy. He more than likely had a perfect high school GPA and an SAT score over 1500. Don’t believe the hype. The SAT may be a poor predictor of “college success,” but it’s an excellent predictor of “hard-as-hell course success.” I seriously doubt that anyone who scores less than 1200 on the SAT or 26 on the ACT will be able to handle a STEM major at a decent school, much less an elite school.
Are You Serious?
Based on the 85th percentile rule, I was barely college material when it came to math. I wasn’t college material when it came to English and reading comprehension. But let’s for the moment assume that I was college material on the English and reading comprehension front as well. Should I have gone to UB?
Hell no.
I had no idea why I was going to college. I was just pursuing higher education because that’s what everyone in my social circle did. I wasn’t interested in any particular field, I had no stomach for hard work, and I lacked the discipline necessary to avoid the riotous partying that was ubiquitous on and off campus. In effect, I wasn’t a serious student. And because of this, I readily morphed into a besotted prop. Here are some of the highlights from my freshman year.
- On my 18th birthday (the legal drinking age in 1979), I went to the pub located on the first floor of my dormitory in my bathrobe (along with everyone else on my dorm floor). Of course, I neglected to put underwear on. And, of course, I proceeded to flash everyone while I was on the dance floor later that night (that sixth shot of Jack Daniels really hit me hard).Quick aside. This was the first and only time I ever blacked out during my drinking career. I don’t remember going on to the dance floor at all. All I remember was waking up the next day with the most brutal hangover imaginable. For the next four years after this infamous birthday, the mere smell of Jack Daniels made me reflexively wretch.
- I got kicked off the football team (long story).
- In my “Great Mysteries of the Earth” course—a course that dealt with such confounding and pressing matters as Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle, and Bigfoot—the syllabus informed me and all my classmates that “any well-manicured ape should get a C in this class.” I ended up getting a D.
- My GPA for my first semester was 1.7.
- I stole an American flag from a business that was located just outside of campus (again, long story, but I did give it back two years later).
- I got expelled for accidentally breaking one of the toilets in our dorm’s bathroom (again, long story). The letter that came from the university president informing me of my expulsion said I was a “clear and present danger to the people of this institution.”
Things got better after my freshman year, of course. I learned how to be a more responsible drunk. And my GPA did rise to 2.7. But my academic “turnaround” only occurred because I chose to major in the fluffiest of all fluff majors at the time, sociology.
Quick aside. I chose to become a sociology major because 1) I desired a major that wouldn’t interfere with my partying, and 2) my girlfriend at the time was a sociology major. Was I pathetic, or what?
I look back at my time at UB with utter disgust. I was the ultimate prop—just a warm body that brought revenue to the institution and didn’t get in the way of the serious people doing serious work.
Don’t do what I did when it comes to higher education. If you don’t know what you want to major in, if you have a penchant for sleeping and procrastinating, and if you’re only jacked up about college because you’re infatuated with the “college experience,” you have no business attending a 4-year college.
Can You Afford It?
Okay, let’s assume that you pass the 85th percentile rule, are determined to become a chemical engineer, and have the necessary discipline to forgo a social life for four years. Is going to a 4-year college for you a no-brainer?
Perhaps. There’s just one more thing I want you to consider: the cost of obtaining your bachelor’s degree.
My biggest gripe with the college-industrial complex is its business model. To get its vaunted bachelor’s degree, you have to waste a lot of time and money on unnecessary crap. And in no particular order, that unnecessary crap is as follows:
- Roughly twenty-five of the forty classes you’ll have to take to obtain a BA will have nothing to do with your major.
- Resort-like dorms and amenities.
- Tenured professors who devote more time to research and grant hunting than to teaching.
- Sports.
- Fraternities and sororities.
- Student government.
- Student fees that support tribalism and Left-wing indoctrination. (If anyone knows of a non-religious 4-year college that uses student fees to support individualism and Right-wing indoctrination, please let me know.)
There’s only one thing worse than paying for all this unnecessary crap. And that’s paying for all this unnecessary crap with debt.
I can’t in good conscience ask anyone to go into debt for a bachelor’s degree. The economic benefits of a bachelor’s degree—even one from a STEM field—are just too tenuous. Consider the following:
- Colleges get all of the benefits of student loans but shoulder none of the risks. What happens if you drop out of college before getting the vaunted bachelor’s degree? What happens if you work your ass off getting a computer science degree but Congress increases the number of H-1B visas and you can’t find a programming gig that can support your monthly student loan nut? What happens if your vaunted bachelor’s degree isn’t as highly prized in the labor market as your alma mater led you to believe and you wind up slinging fraps at Starbucks or driving for Uber? Will your cherished alma mater step in and help you with your student loans payments?
- It’s harder to be true to your values if you’re saddled with debt. What happens if your boss turns out to be a butthead? What happens if a co-worker starts to sexually harass you? What happens if you discover that the company you’re working for is cooking the books, or skirting environmental laws, or taking advantage of poor and unsophisticated people? Will you be able to walk away from that toxic employment if you have student loan debt out the ying-yang?
- And, finally, student loan debt turns you into a prop regardless of how bright and earnest you are. There’s no escaping this sad, regrettable truth. You borrow money to pay for unnecessary crap and you tacitly support a system that makes the financially weak (i.e., young people) purchase unnecessary crap. Why? Why would you go into debt for an institution that has utter contempt for you?
Avoid student loans like the plague. If that means living at home, working part-time, and commuting to a nearby state college or—gasp!—community college, so be it.
Final Thoughts
I recently came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times that dramatically shows the dangers of becoming a prop for the college-industrial complex. Here are the financial situations of the eight students profiled in this article.
| Name | Age | Degree | College | Student Loan Debt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Judith Ruiz | 30 | BA in Broadcast Journalism (2010) | Columbia College Chicago | $80,000 |
| Brian Idziak | 25 | BS in Marketing (2016) | Elmhurst College | $60,000 |
| Rick Ceniceros | 27 | BFA in Television (2013) | Columbia College Chicago | $47,900 |
| Deshoun White | 26 | BS in Marketing (2015) | Southern Illinois University Edwardsville | $34,500 |
| Tiela Halpin | 32 | BA in Photography (2012) | Columbia College Chicago | $80,000 |
| Amanda Spizzirri | 23 | BA in Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies (2017) | DePaul University | $90,000 |
| Jessica Barazowski | 29 | BS in Biology (2015) | Loyola University | $100,000 |
| Katelyn Harper | 26 | BFA in Advertising Art Direction (2013) | Columbia College Chicago | $140,000 |
If each of these students had been aware of my how-not-to-become-a-prop-in-college checklist and used that checklist to guide his or her consumption of higher education, each would be in a much better place today financially. But, no, they all had to follow their dreams and passions. And because they were never taught that college administrators, tenured professors, and coaches can be just as slimy as used-car salespeople, they were totally ripped off and abused by the college-industrial complex.
Remember my how-not-to-become-a-prop-in-college checklist well.
- If you scored below the 85th percentile on the SAT or ACT—that is, if you have average or below average cognitive abilities—the 4-year college isn’t for you.
- If you’re not a serious student—that is, if you have no burning desire to study anything in particular and have no stomach for hard work—the 4-year college isn’t for you.
- And, finally, if you can’t afford all the costs associated with the 4-year college of your choice, and you have to borrow money to attend that 4-year college, that 4-year college isn’t for you. You’ll either have to forgo a private 4-year college in favor of a public 4-year college, forgo a residential 4-year college in favor of a commuting 4-year college, or forgo the notion of a 4-year college altogether and go to a community college.
Now, my how-not-to-become-a-prop-in-college checklist might strike you as overly cruel. But answer me this. What is crueler? Telling people who really aren’t cut out for higher education that they should forget about the vaunted bachelor’s degree and focus instead on learning a trade or getting a worthwhile associate’s degree or certification? Or telling marginal students to pursue their dreams in a 4-year college and watch them hit their prime marriage and house-buying years with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and economically worthless degrees? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
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